The marketing role is always evolving.Increasingly marketers are taking on P&L responsibility.CMO marketing technology spend is now rivaling CIO technology spend.

Gartner reported earlier this year that 75% of marketing leaders said they own or share responsibility for the P&L.As Gartner’s Jake Sorofman said, “Over the past several years, we’ve witnessed an expansion of the CMO mandate, from what was largely a promotional role to what is now often seen as the growth engine for the business.”

That shift from marketing as cost center to marketing as growth engine makes this a particularly exciting time to work in marketing.But sometimes that increased accountability outpaces actual authority.Most of the time, marketers have to market by influence, rather than by direct control.

I first drew a version of this cartoon in 2006 while working in brand management.Brand managers are trained to think of their brands as their businesses.I technically “owned” the P&L for my brand.But most of the line items (trade spending, manufacturing, etc.) were managed by other parts of the organization.So I had to learn how to operate in a matrix of conflicting responsibilities.Brand management taught me to cultivate a P&L mindset — always trying to tie marketing strategies to an effect on the bottom line.

Since then, that pressure on marketers has only increased.There are better tools and far more data to measure the impact of marketing on the business.A friend reminded me of the earlier cartoon last weekend and I decided to recreate it in color to illustrate some of that tension in the evolving marketing role.

5 Comments

Measuring marketing results seems like it deals with the murky territory of figuring out human behavior. If more precise measurement is the goal, should marketing departments hire social scientists to figure out if their messaging holds real influence?

This cartoon addresses what has been for me a significant source of frustration, which is linking investment in marketing and new products to current revenue performance. We increase marketing when times are good, and decrease it when times are bad. Understandable, but crazy. Marketing and product development investments should be tied to an assessment of the opportunity and a compelling argument, not current revenue. After all, entrepreneurs invest large sums with zero revenue. I guess I’m pretty naive.